


oasis in the night clouds

by DirectionAndVelocity (SublimeDiscordance)



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Idiots in Love, Late at Night, M/M, Mild Language, Roy Is Tired(TM), Schmoop, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22250998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SublimeDiscordance/pseuds/DirectionAndVelocity
Summary: Oliver is on patrol and doesn't want to eat alone. Roy wants sleep, but has never been able to deny Oliver anything.
Relationships: Roy Harper/Oliver Queen
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	oasis in the night clouds

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from tumblr and cleaned up a little. Not sure if I posted this in the past year or a long time ago, but I forgot to put it here. So. Here it is. I imagine this as a roliver fic, but if you want to read it as just a very close friendship and/or one-sided and/or pining or something else, be my guest. I tried for domesticity and I'm not convinced I pulled it off. 
> 
> Original prompt: [Text] Come get Taco Bell with me. No, I don’t care that it’s three in the morning, I’m already outside your place. (Roliver)
> 
> Set around…idk, the early seasons, after Roy becomes Arsenal, but before he leaves in season….eh, whatever season that was. I wasn't caught up when writing this and I'm still not any further.
> 
> Rating is for language, nothing more. 
> 
> Title is inspired by Oasis by MitiS feat. Crywolf

He’s not sure whether it’s the fact that his phone is vibrating or that it’s doing it in the preset pattern assigned to only one person that wakes him up. 

“You gotta be f’ck’n kidd’n me,” Roy mumbles to himself, reaching over towards the coffee table from where he’d apparently collapsed on his couch. He scowls at the too-bright numbers cheerfully telling him the time before finally hitting _Accept Call_. “This'd better be godd’mn ‘mport’nt.”

“Hey, are you hungry?”

Oliver’s voice is alert, and more than a little breathless. If Roy had to guess, he’s either just finished a patrol or is in the middle of one. 

“It’s _three ten_ in the _goddamn_ morning,” Roy half-growls at the phone, putting it on speaker so he doesn’t have to exert the effort of actually holding it to his face, “on my _night off_.”

There’s a gentle rush of air and several metallic _zip_ sounds in the background of the call—a grapnel arrow and Oliver swinging somewhere, probably—before there’s an unmistakable sound just outside Roy’s front door. _Not_ over the call. It’s the sound of something human-sized hitting his landing, most likely in heavy boots. 

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Oliver’s voice is echoing slightly through his wall, and Roy briefly closes his eyes and prays to any deity that might be listening that he doesn’t murder someone in the next two minutes, “but I didn’t really want to eat alone, and—” 

His voice trails off, quiet for a moment, before he adds, so softly Roy almost misses it, “I thought you might want some company.”

Roy clamps his teeth over the “What I _wanted_ was some _sleep_ , asshole,” trying to claw its way up his throat. Swallows it down with a small force of will. Instead, he crawls out from under the hoodie he’d apparently been using as a blanket and pulls it on. Cracks his jaw on a soundless yawn that reduces his vision to slits as he scoops up his phone and plods through the front room on still-socked feet, the cool air of his apartment prickling at his bare legs.

Oliver is standing on his stoop in full Arrow gear, phone to his ear, and looks almost startled when Roy actually opens the door. Which, Roy reasons, he has no right to be, given that Roy has never been able to say no to those godddamn puppy dog eyes—at least, not for long. And it's not like he's _naked_ —he _does_ have underwear on, at least. And socks. And the hoodie. 

“Come in before the neighbors notice,” is all Roy tells him, tapping the _End Call_ button and turning away from the door by way of invitation. When Oliver doesn’t move at first, Roy rolls his eyes and says, more forcefully, “In, Ollie. And shut the door behind you. If we're doing this, I need pants.“

The soft click of latch on frame is accompanied by silence. Oliver doesn’t comment on the nickname, just like every other time Roy has let it slip out. Instead, he waits a beat before asking, “Does Big Belly Burger sound okay to you?”

~~

It takes Roy only a handful of moments to locate the collapsible bow he keeps hidden in his bedroom, right beside the bracer with a handful of arrows, grapnels, and flechettes hidden within. It takes him only an additional moment to dig for a spare mask, in case they run into trouble and need the voice modulation tech Felicity had managed to cram into the mask’s lower rim. He still has no idea how _that_ works, but he’s not about to question it. 

After that, pants and gear successfully on, his hoodie hood up, it only takes them a few minutes to get to the nearest BBB. They touch down at the back of the building, carefully avoiding the man on a smoke break by the dumpster, and Oliver dutifully hands Roy a wad of cash. 

He stows his gear in his pockets, leaving the bow with Oliver, and walks around the building without asking for an order. Not like he needs to, anyway. Walks back out five minutes later carrying a bag with the Big Double, extra bacon, no ketchup or mayo, and extra fries. He has a milkshake sweating in his other hand, sucking on the straw with minimal results. 

“Did you get—” Oliver starts, before Roy digs into his hoodie pocket and pulls out a handful of mustard packets, dumping them into Oliver’s palm.

Mustard. With fries. Roy almost shudders at the thought.

Five minutes grapneling finds them back at Roy’s place. The couch he’d been using as a bed is serving its intended purpose, the two of them shoulder to shoulder as they eat. Their masks lie in a small pile of two on the coffee table, Oliver respectfully not putting his feet up even as Roy demonstrates no such compunctions. He’s already shucked the jeans he’d pulled on, tossing them under the table.

Oliver lets Roy steal half his fries, and hasn’t said a word as Roy dips then in the milkshake he’d gotten for himself. Roy, meanwhile, carefully does not say anything as Oliver rips open the mustard packets, adding one to his burger, and using the others to build a small mountain on the corner of his burger wrapper for dipping his fries.

They don’t speak. There’s a kind of silence that’s descended over them that’s not uncomfortable, but is instead _familiar_. Hundreds—if not _thousands_ —of hours patrolling together mean that Roy can tell what Oliver’s thinking just by the way he breathes, by the pattern his eyes make as they trace from one thing to the next. Just as many hours spent together outside of patrol—sparring, meditating, training, or otherwise—mean that Roy recognizes the little hitch to Oliver’s breathing as meaning he’s about to speak.

"Thank you.”

It shouldn’t surprise Roy. And yet, somehow, it does. Maybe it’s the warm flutter in his chest. Or maybe it’s the brush of knuckles against his own where he’s holding the remenants of his shake.

“Are you going back out?” Roy asks, instead of saying all the other things scratching at his throat. He maybe feels a twinge at how needy the question had sounded, but the ache of weariness behind his eyelids is growing a bit too strong for him to truly give a shit. Besides, it’s Ollie.

Roy watches as Oliver balls up his foil wrapper, carefully making sure the pieces of mustard packets are safely contained. He feels Oliver’s shrug against his own shoulder.

“Probably. The city is never really safe.”

“Right,” Roy breathes, sighing through his nose. “Always more to do, right?”

“Yeah.” The backs of Oliver's fingers brush over Roy's thigh, so soft he almost thinks he might've imagined it. Roy isn't sure if it's supposed to be affection or a quiet apology—knowing Ollie, probably both.”

Roy just _hmmms_ in answer, fiddling with the zipper on his hoodie, before he sits up and tugs the red garment off. When he lays back, he twists until his feet are up on the couch, wrapping the hoodie around his shoulders like a blanket and using the hood as a pillow against Oliver’s shoulder. If Oliver has any objections to the new position, he doesn’t say them.

“Then I’m gonna try to get some actual goddamn _sleep_.”

Roy huffs to himself. Tells himself he’s probably imagining the fond-sounding, basso _huh_ he hears through the ear in contact with Oliver. The other man is many things, but a sap has never been one of them. 

(Except maybe where Roy is concerned, but that doesn't count, he tells himself.)

“Goodnight, Ollie.”

“Goodnight, Roy.”

Just before falling asleep, Roy could swear he feels fingers carding through his short hair.

~~

When his phone alarm wakes him in the morning, Oliver is gone, and his place still smells like Big Belly Burger. But, Roy wakes covered, not in his hoodie, but in an actual blanket that smells faintly of Oliver. And, when he reaches for his phone to silence the screeching alarm, Roy finds a single green flechette, pointedly left on his coffee table.

He might be imagining it, but he could swear it’s warm to the touch. Or, well. Maybe that’s just him.


End file.
